Monday, December 24, 2012

Come on! Why not? They started off manufacturing cars by borrowing components from other companies. At one point Hyundai was struggling. Cost cutting resulted in poor quality and Hyundai was deemed as an unreliable product. They even tagged it "Hope You Understand Nothing is Drive-able And Inexpensive". They started investing on quality, design and even tied up with Honda for quality survey and measures. Sales began to increase in 2004 and since then quality has never been a compromising factor. They hired new designers. Christopher Chapman, ex-designer of BMW was hired as the head of design in the US and Kia hired Peter Schreyer, a former Volkswagen / Audi designer.

The design has changed for sure. We see the fluidic vehicles everywhere and they simply nailed it. The fluidic Elantra for instance is just amazing. Suddenly it seems to me that Hyundai is at the top of the leader board and they are taking it seriously.
You should read this article about the company and you will know. Its quiet interesting the length to which a company would go to compete with other manufacturers in the industry. I personally like their story. Its not British or American. Its South Korean and they have definitely come a long way.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Innova gives a mileage of 11 kmpl of petrol. At 75 rupees per litre of petrol you would end up travelling 73.3 kms for 500 rupees. My i10 gives about 15 kmpl. That is about 99.9 kms; a difference of 26.6 kms i.e I could go from RT Nagar to Koramangala and back to RT Nagar (well, somewhat).

You have a credit card with a 5 to 10 % cashback offer but you still end up spending more. If you are someone who works out your monthly budget you will notice how big an expense it is. So yes, mileage is important and I don't understand why in the name of luxury ordinary people end up making a mess of their life buying cars that simply don't meet the needs. I spend 7.5 lacs for a top end fabia and I expect a top end mileage out of it. Hell! It gives about 13 kmpl in city.

So lets do some math. For 500 rupees petrol what is the total mileage in city you will get from the following vehicles with the assumption that its 75 rupees a kilometer.